THE BROWN FLOWER

THE angel who guards the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven left
them open one evening by chance, and a man wandered in.

As he looked at the silvery light a holy one came up to him.

“What are you doing here, friend?” it asked. “You have no pass from the
Angel of Death; you must go out again.”

And the man answered: “Oh, I am willing to go. I do not wish to stay
here” (for the woman he loved was below and his heaven was there). “But
let me only gather a few of these flowers of heaven to place on the
heart of one I love.”

And the angel said, “Gather them.” For it knew he was in the rapture of
first love, and the Angels of God look down with pitying eyes when they
see soul fiercely knit to soul.

And the man gathered from their beds crimson, silver, and golden Flowers
of Heaven; Rapturous‐joy, Hope‐in‐the‐future, Sweet‐touch‐of‐hands,
Union‐in‐daily‐life; these he took and turned to go.

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But the angel called him back.

“You have left the best of all,” she said. “See that small brown flower
growing close to the root of the tree; take that. For the flowers you
have got, they are only immortal in heaven; on the earth they fade.”

So he gathered the brown flower, and went.

And it came to pass after thirty years that Death went to visit a lonely
woman who was at the end of her journey. And Death, Death the
all‐seeing, before whom all things are laid bare, looked into the lonely
woman’s bosom. Once there had been brilliant flowers laid there, by the
hand of a man: Rapturous‐Joy—but that had been nipped by a cruel frost;
Sweet‐union‐in‐daily‐life—that she had given up to another; the
Sweet‐touch‐of‐hands—it had dropped from her while she was still young;
Hope‐in‐the‐future—it had faded and faded slowly away from her. But when
Death looked into her bosom, lying against the old shrivelled breast was
still one small brown flower, fresh and tender as on the day the man
laid it there, and the name of the flower was Trust.